Marauder Shields
Member
WoW still a beast it seems.
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World of Warcraft is down to 6.8 million subs; Blizzard on the verge of sleet
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Dark_castle
Junior Member
Blizzard:
Hey_Blinkin
Member
They could probably get me to bite if they had a good expansion pack + year long sub promotion.
Mop was the real killer here I can see it having the most subscription losses.
Give people whatever they want, buff everything and homogenize all classed did not really work well evidently. Even the raids were boring and generic compared to previous expansions. They were basically aoe your way to boss.
Only after 5.2 the game began shaping up but only because of tot contents and raid, raiding became fun again but that was too little too late.
That being said I have to admit wod looks really promising. Blizzard actually has a good to end up with less losses this time.
Regardless, wow has aged and had a good run. They should promote project titan by next year and maintain smooth user base transfer. And please no consoles. Do not ruin our experience.
Give people whatever they want, buff everything and homogenize all classed did not really work well evidently. Even the raids were boring and generic compared to previous expansions. They were basically aoe your way to boss.
Only after 5.2 the game began shaping up but only because of tot contents and raid, raiding became fun again but that was too little too late.
That being said I have to admit wod looks really promising. Blizzard actually has a good to end up with less losses this time.
Regardless, wow has aged and had a good run. They should promote project titan by next year and maintain smooth user base transfer. And please no consoles. Do not ruin our experience.
I think we seeing just overall burn out on WoW in general. I really don't think Blizzard could anything to prevent this.
I've played since launch and generally re-sub each expansion to play through the content. Every time, I reach level cap realize that all the raids and dungeons are inaccessible for a relatively casual play like me. I cancel soon after. MoP changed this completely for me. I re-subbed in March with 2 friends. We were/are having a blast. LFD/LFR/Scenarios/solo old stuff/BGs/Arena are all super accessible. I'm really, really excited for WoD. So, they've hooked me again, but for a lot of casual players I think the WoW train has sailed. They've moved on to something else.
I subscribe all year long anyway, so I'd be down for another one of those. Getting Diablo 3 for free was pretty sweet.
As others have stated, once WoD drops those numbers will pick up, but still Blizzard can not be happy about the decline. I really hope F2P is not in WoW's future anytime soon.
It needs to happen
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
It would essentially be them running two games for the price of one.
It's never gonna happen.
Has any MMO reverted to an earlier version? I remember SWG had this problem and the answer was always given "We deleted the server code for that era"
First off: weird you wouldn't save every single revision somewhere just in case, and copyright reasons. Someone steals the code and then runs their own server, how do you prove it's yours?
Second: I'm now pretty sure I've heard that from Blizzard before regarding Vanilla too.
EverQuest 1 does this. They have servers that start right back at vanilla and unlock each expansion pack a month at a time or something.
Pretty fucking cool idea IMO. Would love to see that in WOW. Then we can moan about missing all the stuff we moan about being in WOW now
I'd argue that those changes began near the end of Wotlk. They were still new and people didn't have time with them, and this notion persisted to the beginning of Cataclysm, after which the playerbase began deteriorating. The changes were and are real and had a huge impact, writing it all off as burnout is flat-out wrong.
Right now, I think that I'd only play World of Warcraft again if it was F2P. I'd be glad if such a thing was announced one day.
I think the issue is a lot more nuanced than you're making it out to be. The game experience has changed dramatically from both mechanic/design and social standpoints. Some things are purely the work of Blizzard, and others are outside their control (mainly in the social aspect)
I think the fondness a lot of people have for vanilla WoW was that the experience was much more "RPGy" for several reasons, and the way the game and world was designed back then enabled a much more player-driven world and community. The game wasn't really designed around quickly herding the playerbase towards the latest raid content in a convenient, hassle-free manner.
A lot of the tools for this like LFD and LFR didn't exist back then. But this was partly offset by a constant influx of new players leveling their characters out in the world. There were always people in the zones looking for dungeon groups or help with group quests, which drove a lot of the social aspect and really made the game feel like a living world. This is where some of my fondest memories come from anyway, and I met a lot of friends that way.
This is the part of the game that gradually faded as the active playerbase consolidated around the max level, and I think it was at least in part a natural process that Blizzard couldn't do much about. But the implementation of the dungeon finder certainly made it a lot more worse with its consequences (ie people leveling their characters by sitting in a capital and spamming LFD). Another problem with these tools is that they have basically changed the social experience into the equivalent of chat roulette. You have casual, fleeting encounters with random people that you will never see again, and all the baggage that comes with it (ie, assholes), which further eroded the sense of community in the game.
Then we have the mechanical aspects which is mainly the class and race designs. As unbalanced as they may have been, they were designed to actually feel substantially different from eachother and really give the player a sense of identity with their class and race choice. Hell, priests even got unique spells based on the race they had chosen (and this was initially the plan for every class, IIRC). I think this style of design was mainly killed due to the minmaxing obsession that started to sweep the playerbase. It's true that the game is probably better balanced than it ever has been today, but there was a steep price to pay for that. For me, playing a paladin barely feels any different from playing a warrior nowadays.
SiKotikJ30
Member
I don't think a vanilla server, if it's even possible, is worth Blizzard's time or money. I feel most people would try it with good intentions then quickly abandon it when they realize that a lot of the advancements in mechanics and quality of life, etc, over the first two expansions are/were good for the game.
Now, TBC or WotLK era servers? Go for it.
Now, TBC or WotLK era servers? Go for it.
Evidently 6.8 million people do. It's because of the year long content gap since the SoO raid. 6.8mill is more than all the other MMO's (potentially combined).
People seriously need to remember how things truly were. First mount at level 40, overpriced epic ground mount, painfully slow normal flying mounts (when epic flying mounts were unattainable for majority of the playerbase). Both dropping mount levels and increasing speed of normal flying mounts were great.
There maybe were some questionable changes but come on, a lot of quality-of-life changes made over years were a godsend. Besides, subs would drop anyway no matter what Blizz did, the game is 10 years old.
There maybe were some questionable changes but come on, a lot of quality-of-life changes made over years were a godsend. Besides, subs would drop anyway no matter what Blizz did, the game is 10 years old.
Hell, flying mounts wern't available in vanilla wow.
I have a lot of nostalgia for old 40 man raids, especially Molten Core, but if available I would just wish I had more time to play :S. Another problem with vanilla servers would be they would never get new content, so once players are completed with the content there wont be anything else added.
There are very good, thriving, community solutions for all of this. It baffles me when people still bother with Blizzard when it comes to this topic.
Titan is a trainwreck that has been in development for years, has been restarted at least once, and no one knows what it is or when it'll come, if ever. I wouldn't hold my breath.
Laieon
Member
Guild Wars 2 is incredibly boring at max level and the combat feels insanely floaty. Leveling is good though, but the same can be said about any MMO. Probably the biggest disappointment for me of the past 5 years. It starts out with a ton of potential, then you meet Trahearne and the game takes a nose dive. I haven't played in awhile, but I remember being incredibly disappointed to see how terrible Orre looked compared to the starting zones.
I didn't feel like Final Fantasy XIVs world felt nearly as cohesive as Azeroth. It felt like it had a lot of hallways and loading screens and in general felt closer to a Phantasy Star Online successor.
WoW definitely has a problem with the amount of time it takes for patches to come out (at least near the end of the expansion), but if I was looking to recommend an MMO to someone who had never played one, I still think WoW is by far the best. Nothing on the market even comes close, and there isn't anything even close to dethroning it as the best MMO right now. I don't think the issue is with the game, I think it's with the genre. In general, I've noticed less people wanting to play MMOs ever since games like League of Legends and DOTA have taken off.
I'm not nearly as excited for WoD as I was for MoP and Cata (which for me personally was my least favorite WoW expansion), but I'll still be buying the CE day 1 because exploring new zones is my favorite part of the game.
how about adding content that is more than gear resets in disguise?
the fact you lose you ability to ride flying mounts with the introduction of each new expansion and the comminuty's eagerness to accept such a blantant removal of earned content, caused me to lose all faith in both the game and the people who play it.
oh...
and the pets
pets before player housing...
pets before in-world player permanence...
wtf?!
blizzard might as well have sent me a note saying "thank you but this game isn't meant for you"
riceandpea
Neo Member
For my mind, I'm not feeling WoW burnout. Sure I fondly recall the longer dungeons and the social aspect of it - but these days its kind of comfort gaming. I don't need to worry about anything, I just grind for the sake of grinding and, you know what, I enjoy that.
I also enjoy the lore of it. Which is probably weird.
I also enjoy the lore of it. Which is probably weird.
Laieon
Member
The pet update was awesome. I'd much rather have a Pokemon-esque thing to do in my free time then sit around in a house waiting for a queue to pop.
Content essentially becomes trashed each time a new expansion is released, and in many respects every time a content patch is released. It's a blatant cycle of making content obsolete. At the same time, the game is starving with people being bored out of their mind with the same raid for months.
It's a bad structure that worked in TBC and Wotlk, because progression was significantly slower and strictly sequential (you couldn't go from Karazhan to Black Temple, period). When they accelerated progression starting from the end of Wotlk, the whole thing fell apart. Raid is released, consumed, and thrown away in a matter of weeks at best.
EDIT: As for the pets, the feature speaks for itself: There's nothing meaningful to do in the game apart from chewing dungeons and raids.
Flying mounts were not a good thing to happen to the game, especially PVP servers. If some no life max levels want to gank people levelling there's nothing you can do because of it except hearthstone and go back to levelling in dungeons from Stormwind/Ogrimmar. It also makes the world feel a lot smaller and less populated. If WoD does away with them entirely then so much the better.
WoD has garrisons which is arguably a lot more interesting than standard player housing.
riceandpea
Neo Member
I agree. My only criticism is that is that it's not as in-depth as I would like and there's not as much variety as I would like. Otherwise, love it.
Mount collecting too.
If people want to crap on Cata, by all means, but MoP was an incredible return to form.
I play for a bit once every 6 months months or so, but Cata couldn't even sustain that.
With Vanilla servers you not only miss some amazing quality of life enhancements, but in terms of PvE you miss out on both Karazhan and Ulduar - some of the best "dungeon" style content in any game.
Given that even the traditional 'try something new, go back to WoW' base is shrinking (of which I was a part), I still think WoW is doing remarkably well - especially given the aforementioned content gap.
About the only thing I really miss from vanilla is that hybrids could be actual hybrids and the focus on battleground PvP.
I play for a bit once every 6 months months or so, but Cata couldn't even sustain that.
With Vanilla servers you not only miss some amazing quality of life enhancements, but in terms of PvE you miss out on both Karazhan and Ulduar - some of the best "dungeon" style content in any game.
Given that even the traditional 'try something new, go back to WoW' base is shrinking (of which I was a part), I still think WoW is doing remarkably well - especially given the aforementioned content gap.
About the only thing I really miss from vanilla is that hybrids could be actual hybrids and the focus on battleground PvP.
Messerschmidt
Member
Yes, both had rep grinds and dailies, but I remember it being much more brutal in Cataclysm when it came to keeping raid-ready. I didn't have that feeling in MoP.
LAUGHTREY
Modesty becomes a woman
No flying every expansion is needed because otherwise questing would be trivial... you'd just fly exactly where you need to go and bypass all other obstacles.
Not to mention anyone with stealth immediately gets out of combat easy peasy.
But the no-housing thing you're spot on. They just don't want to do it. They added garrisons, which is basically a cop-out compared to Wildstars housing system.
They've been very careful to not even label it as a player house, and it's in-game story is that its a military base...that you cut gems and do other relaxing minutia in.
It's embarrassing really how much customization Wildstar has on WoW. There's really no excuse.
StormyTheRabbit
Member
Yes, there is an excuse, Blizz doesn't want to do it. And I'd much rather have a base that is tied into the story of an expansion, isn't totally customization (Despite being able to build it exactly how you want), and make various QoL improvements for me through out the expansion verses just a house that I'd sit in with my "trophies" that none of my friends in the game would ever see.
Just upgraded my Garrison to the max level in the WoD beta with all of the potential followers you can find, it felt like a living, breathing place. It's awesome!
i honestly don't mind the pets.
i can easily understand why people, maybe even myself, might enjoy it.
it's blizzard putting a pokemon mini-game in before other highly demanded possible content, such as player housing, which bothers me.
there's got to be a way to add content w/o taking old content away and/or making it completely obsolete
riceandpea
Neo Member
The Caverns of Time say hi!
my account was hacked and then used to 'bot resources
call blizz
they'll have you back up in less than ten minutes
mckmas8808
Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
The amount actually does matter. You can't throw away context.
Nah, closer to $65MM.
King Gilga
Member
After giving people a year with 0 content except for cash shop mounts they deserve less.
Not really, you still have 300k health at level 100 in WoD, it's completely stupid.
The sub loss has nothing to do with the lolcompetition and everything to do with the game and blizzard themselves.
Brawlers guild is almost completely trivialized by gear. Still kinda fun though, I hope they do one in WoD with gear downscaling ala CMs/proving grounds
You are super underestimating how many people play F2P mmos, especially in asia.
Not really, you still have 300k health at level 100 in WoD, it's completely stupid.
The sub loss has nothing to do with the lolcompetition and everything to do with the game and blizzard themselves.
Brawlers guild is almost completely trivialized by gear. Still kinda fun though, I hope they do one in WoD with gear downscaling ala CMs/proving grounds
You are super underestimating how many people play F2P mmos, especially in asia.
True. The expansion probably won't be out before November so we can expect another 500K loss for the next quarter.
They keep making the same mistakes. Nobody wants to do SOO for a year just like they didn't want to do Dragon Soul for a year but this time Blizzard hasn't conned people into an annual pass.
Idk if I would consider it a Con personally, it was great value for those that still played. Had it been any other WoW xpac I probably would have gotten it too but Cata was definately my worst experience in WoW, but yes this probably is why the numbers had stayed at least a little higher from last year.
RoninChaos
Member
Whoever said the RPG elements are gone really hit the nail on the head. I have three melee classes and I remember doing the class quest for my new stance and weapon in vanilla. I remember the quest required to get my paladin mount. My wife was crazy about the warlock quest for her dread steed. Blizzard took all that stuff away, and I think the game has been far worse off for it since. I like the streamline they've done for a lot of things and the quality of life changes have been great, but there's very little that makes my paladin feel different from my warrior except that some of the icons are different.
Suzushiiro
Banned
The issue started when they introduced difficulty levels for raids to make them more accessible, first in the form of 10man/25man then in the form of normal/heroic. Just as the playerbase consolidates around max level given enough time, the playerbase will also consolidate around the highest raid tier they can get to given enough time. In Vanilla and BC the barrier for entry increased each raid tier such that you had sizable groups of players at every tier, so there were no problems, but in LK you started seeing T7 become a ghost town once Ulduar hit because by the time Ulduar came out the vast majority of the level 80 playerbase was done with Naxx and had no interest in running it again. So the choices for Blizzard became-
A)Do nothing and be faced with a lot of fresh 80s on low to mid-pop servers with no real way to advance to join the rest of the playerbase because there was no viable way to run the content required to get there, or
B)Allow players to catch up to the latest raid tier by farming 5-mans.
So they went with option B.
As someone who raided hardcore back then I personally enjoyed the Vanilla/BC model more too, but if they had stuck with it I think they would have gone back down to 6.8 million subs a lot quicker than they did.
Agreed, I know the idea was to make everyone feel useful and to have your class not relegated to healing if you could heal and tank if you were a warrior, but, there just isn't a big enough difference among classes now. This is the downside of homogenization.
Reading through the WoD beta patch notes and just seeing stuff like necrotic strike being removed is a downer. I know its to make it easier to balance PvE dps for DK's, but damn, that was signature ability and a bread and butter move for PvP on top of it being a unique ability. I know their intent is to reduce the keybinds, but the most I saw for the classes I play were passives being steamlined...that won't be reducing my keybinds.
Having said all that, I do enjoy leveling and gearing up alts with my wife and if a couple buddies I've rolled with since vanilla re-up, we usually will do some arena/heroics and have a good time. I'm sure I will be back even if it is for a month or 2 after WoD hits, but that $50 price tag is too high honestly.
It would have been great value had the content been of high enough quality and had MOP come out much sooner. Farming an 8 boss raid that uses almost entirely recycled assets for nearly a year did not represent good value.
Some homogeneity is essential for class balance otherwise classes and specs get pigeon holed and it becomes much harder for guilds that can't stack the right classes while it becomes much easier for those that can so then Blizzard have to balance things around class stacking and you just get another Sunwell (which nobody in their right mind wants!). I think Ghostcrawler and his team did a great job on the class revamps.
I agree about the class quests though. It's also a shame that epic quest lines like the Scepter of Shifting Sands, Linkin and Onyxia's Lair attunements are a thing of the past.
flyinpiranha
Member
Are they doing anything for the 10 year anniversary?
Suzushiiro
Banned
They haven't officially said anything, but I'm sure there's going to be some big in-game event for it.
flyinpiranha
Member
Cool, will definitely have to re-up for some thing like that. Hopefully it's not like every expansion where it's SERVER FULL 234th in QUE! type stuff.
These are the speculated additions for the 10th Anniversary based on datamining thus far:
-Hogger minipet
-Corehound mount
-100 v 100 Tarren Mill/Southshore Battleground
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